Voter identification laws and unintentional discrimination in elections

Discrimination

Unintentional Discrimination

Unintentional discrimination occurs when a company's policies uncritically reflect prejudicial stereotypes yet do not involve overt racial prejudices of its managers or executives. Does legislation to verify voter identification fall under the domain of unintentional or intentional discrimination? Explain your views.

The voter verification effects that are currently being proposed, predominately in Conservative lead states, are both unintentional and intentional discrimination. They are unintentional in their best case given that legislators have reasonable assumptions to make the passage of these verification requirements mandatory for all potential voters. Some analysts believe that voter fraud is a real threat to the political system. Although there have only been a handful of voter fraud cases ever prosecuted in the United States, there might be a seemingly legitimate argument to support voter identification initiatives. For example, J. Christian Adams, an election lawyer in Alexandria, Va., and advocate for voter-ID laws who blogs about election law is on record for claiming "We pass laws against voter fraud because the system must be free from corruption" and rejected the notion that corrupt election officials wouldn't enforce the laws (Bialik, 2012).

Therefore, even though the assumptions of this argument are based on idealistic values, it would be difficult to state that all attempts at voter suppression represent conscious efforts to discriminate against certain Democrat leaning demographics. Many legislators may indeed they are preserving some integrity in the voting system. However, there have been some clues that have emerged in the media that indicate that some elective officials were more sinister in their motives. For example, Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours was quoted as saying, "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter-turnout machine" (Plunder, 2012). Another overt example of framing this situation in such terms can be exemplified by Mike Turzai of Allegheny, who is the republican House Majority leader, was filmed saying, "Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it's done. First pro-life legislation - abortion facility regulations - in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done. (Demby, 2012)"